The Enchanted Forest of Camelot
by A.Diamond
Summary: "I've never met a faun who was so sensitive about the relative size of his ears," Arthur defended, almost sounding sincere until he followed up with a mutter that was clearly meant for Merlin to hear: "Then again, I've never met a faun with ears that big and horns that small." / For the Camelot Drabble prompts: First Day of School, Time Out, and Crushes
1. Flora for Fauna

"Merlin, get down from there at once!" Gaius bleated, hooves stamping a frustrated pattern into the dry dirt.

"I won't!"

"You will, or your mother will hear about it!"

"I don't care!" Merlin called back (though he certainly did), defiant in his upset. "I told her I didn't even want to come here!"

"It doesn't matter what you want," the older boy standing next to Gaius drawled, his voice carrying up into the branches that cradled Merlin despite his disinterested tone. "Once you're old enough, which I suppose you must be even if you don't act like it, you're required to attend school. It's the only way you can learn to be civilized. Clearly not a moment too soon, in your case."

"Arthur!" Gaius chastised, but Merlin's indignant snort was louder.

"I'm the uncivilized one?"

"You are the one in the tree."

"At least I don't go around acting like I rule the forest!"

"That's because you _don't_ rule the forest, idiot."

"What, like you do?"

The look Arthur directed up at him made him feel like the idiot he'd been called, but he crashed on through his accusation.

"Even the Sidhe King himself has to be polite, that's what my mum always said! And since you're not him, you 'specially shouldn't be insulting folk!"

"I may not be the Sidhe King," Arthur started, smug, but Gaius cut him off with an irritated huff.

"Indeed you aren't, so what's this about insulting your classmates?"

"I didn't insult anyone!" Arthur protested. "I just—"

"You said my horns could never be bigger than my ears!"

The scraggly eyebrow that Gaius raised at Arthur would, in the years that followed, become so familiar to Merlin that they'd cause nightmares at least once a fortnight. Arthur just stuck his chin out.

"I've never met a faun who was so sensitive about the relative size of his ears," he defended, almost sounding sincere until he followed up with a mutter that was clearly meant for Merlin to hear: "Then again, I've never met a faun with ears that big and horns that small."

"Arthur!" Gaius thundered, and that at least earned a sheepish flinch, even if Arthur still looked sullenly smug. The expression faded to dismay as Gaius lectured. "I told you last spring and the spring before that that I would not tolerate this sort of behaviour, but here it is, the first day after the vernal equinox, and you're at it again!

"You're a bully, Arthur Pendragon, and I've had quite enough of it. You're going to go to the Peaceful Grotto—no, don't give me that look, you are—and meditate on your actions and how to repay the debt of good faith you owe Merlin now. If you're very lucky, the dryad might even reveal herself to offer advice."

"I can't owe him a faith debt, he's not even part of the Court!" Arthur complained (really a whine, Merlin thought). "Plus, the dryad hates me, you know that. She'll never help!"

"Then you'll just have to come up with something on your own. Court or not, you're bound to the codes of hospitality in the forest you seem to think you're ready to rule. No more arguing, go!"

The boy (Prince of the Tuatha De Danann, Arthur Pendragon, heir to the enchanted Camelot Forest—Merlin should have known he wasn't just a human child) grumbled and stormed away, kicking at moss and snapping twigs as he went. Merlin glared after him until a pointed throat clearing drew his attention back to Gaius and his terrible eyebrow.

"Your mother made a great sacrifice to get you enrolled here, Merlin. Don't let it go to waste by getting in foolish arguments with the gentry. Now come down!"

Merlin clambered out of the tree, though he pouted the whole way. "I don't know why she bothered," he said bitterly. "They all hate me because I'm half human anyway."

"Some of them might hold that against you," Gaius agreed, his voice sad, "but your father was a great man and you have nothing to be ashamed of. And Arthur isn't one of those who will. He's a spoiled brat, but he'll grow out of it and be a great leader... In time."

* * *

Afternoon had just barely started fading into evening by the time Arthur returned. Gaius had spent the day discussing magical herbs and their more mundane medicinal properties, and the other students had spent the day excluding and whispering about Merlin.

The young prince caught Merlin as he was about to leave, blocking the path. He looked somehow taller, but his face held a new uncertainty to it.

Merlin was initially wary about the hand Arthur held behind himself, but forgot all about it when Arthur blurted, eyes focused on the distance past Merlin's shoulder, "My mother was human."

Merlin gaped at him.

"It's not common knowledge, but it's also not as much of a secret as my father would like. I'm only telling you because—well, you probably thought that's why I was giving you a hard time. Which is clearly moronic. You just have ridiculous ears."

"Is this... Are you trying to apologize? Because you're awful at it."

Scowling, Arthur thrust his hidden hand at Merlin. Merlin tentatively took the wreath, a beautifully woven ring of bluebells and purple hyacinth, crowned with a magnificent white orchid. The flowers were cool and vibrant under his fingertips, and he barely stopped himself from dropping it with a gasp.

"Are they... alive? How is that possible?"

Arthur gave him another withering look. "I'm the crown prince of the Camelot Sidhe, _Merlin_. If you're going to be sticking around, you might as well stop acting like an idiot when I display the least bit of my majesty."

Merlin laughed, settling the wreath over his brow. It fit perfectly. "You're still a prat," he told Arthur. "What makes you think I want to stick around?"

"Because," Arthur said, slinging an arm around Merlin's shoulders, "there's just something about you, Merlin."


	2. Can't Sidhe the Forest for the Trees

Arthur stormed through the trees, thrashing every twig and leaf in his way. Flares of magic burst with each snap, protesting the cruel treatment, but he brushed them aside. It was his forest, he'd fix it later.

If he felt like it.

It wasn't far from Gaius's glade to the Peaceful Grotto—a cave just off the large stream with a vaulted roof and large, naturally formed holes to let in the light—but Arthur carved a long, wandering path of destruction instead of going directly there. It was a protest.

He shouldn't have been sent in the first place, not for pointing out something entirely true about the idiotic new faun. He _did_ have big ears.

And anyway, so what if Arthur was a bully? He was the prince of Camelot Forest, his power second only to the king's, and Arthur's father was rarely nice to anyone. There was no reason Arthur should have to play nice with every faun, cyclops, and will-o'-the-wisp that annoyed him.

By the time he reached the Grotto, he was no calmer. In fact, he was so worked up that at first he didn't notice the massive figure curled within the far edge of the rock wall.

When he did, he had to take a step back at seeing a giant eye, as tall as he was if not taller, focused on him with burning intensity.

After only a moment of stunned staring, he cleared his throat. "Greetings, Dragon Kilgharrah," he said, because even Sidhe royalty preferred not to disrespect a Great Dragon.

"Princeling," it said in response, because Great Dragons had no such preferences about Sidhe royalty. "It's well past time for you to stop taking your little tantrums out on the forest."

Arthur scowled. "I do not have tantrums!"

"Of course you do." Kilgharrah waved a clawed hand, brushing aside his protest like it was ridiculous. "They're almost as frequent as your abuses of your peers."

"I don't abuse anyone," Arthur complained again, "and they're not my peers! I'm the—"

He was cut short as the dragon thrust its head towards him with alarming speed, stopping with the ridge of its nose just shy of his face so it could peer down at him.

Arthur could feel its breaths curling against his cheeks, hot as a brownie's stove, but he pretended his father was watching and didn't let himself flinch back.

"You're the most spoiled brat to be in line for Camelot's throne since Uther was your age, which is neither a surprise nor the point. I've gone to some inconvenience to come here and offer you a piece of advice."

Grinding his teeth against the dragon's insult to his father, Arthur managed to stay silent as he waited for Kilgharrah to finish.

Apparently satisfied that it had Arthur's attention, it continued, "The young faun will be a great ally to you, if you let him."

"What, Merlin?" Arthur demanded, forgetting his manners in horror. "What could he possibly do for me?"

But the dragon was already stretching past Arthur out of the cavern, and it said nothing else before its giant wings sent waves of wind against Arthur's back.

Annoyed all over again, Arthur shuffled over to a rock in the center of the Grotto and sat down, staring at the darkly marbled stone wall. At least Kilgharrah's ramblings had saved him from a few more minutes of _meditation_.

Arthur rolled his eyes before shutting them.

Despite his best efforts to keep thinking about how obnoxious the faun had been, or how he'd like to muzzle the dragon with vines next time he saw him, even he couldn't fight the harmonious energy of the Peaceful Grotto.

His mind turned to his mother, whom he'd never met. There was only one portrait of her, hanging beside his father's bed, and he'd gotten into a lot of trouble when he was younger for sneaking in while the king held court to stare at it.

He'd known, even before his father had told him, that she wasn't Sidhe. Her features had been too soft and warm to fit in, and Arthur looked more like her than his father.

Learning she'd been human was a shock, though. Humans were forbidden in Camelot Forest, by his father's own order! That had come after, though. After he'd met her and fallen in love and taken her on as a consort in secret, because she couldn't be Queen. After she'd died giving birth to Arthur, too frail—too human—to survive the half-Sidhe prince draining her lifeforce.

He didn't know why his father kept the portrait, since he never looked at it and got mad when Arthur did. He even told Arthur that he wasn't supposed to tell anyone he was part mortal, but Arthur had heard the whispers and seen how certain members of the Court looked at him when they thought he or his father couldn't see.

They knew, and they hated him for it.

Just like that, he remembered hearing about another human who'd come to Camelot. It had been after Arthur was born, but not by much. Long enough for it to be breaking the ban, though. He'd stayed long enough to get a forest dweller with child before he'd been run off, though. A faun woman.

She'd had a son, and even though he apparently looked enough like a full-blooded faun to stay in Camelot, everyone knew and said mean things and—

Oh.

He hadn't actually known that was Merlin, but it made sense now. No wonder he'd cried so easily, if he was used to people making fun of him for that.

That was just stupid. Arthur didn't care about his dad, he'd just wanted to talk to the boy and his huge, dumb ears had seemed like a good place to start. It wasn't his fault everyone else had been cruel.

So Gaius wasn't right, he didn't _really_ owe Merlin an apology, but he'd offer one anyway.

He was a gracious prince, after all.


	3. Flirting with Fluting

Merlin sprawled in the soft moss bed that grew thick around the roots of his favorite oak tree, gazing out at the first blush of sunset. The days were growing longer as summer solstice approached, and he loved coming to this hill to watch the sky turn gold and then dark.

He was more impatient than ever for the brightness and warmth of summer. It felt like spring had dragged on forever. He couldn't even blame it on the unusually long stretch of rainy weather, which the Witch of Mists had said was the hive dwarves' fault for cutting down too many cloudruby vines over the winter. The dwarves had turned around and accused the centaurs of destroying their altar stone, which led to a brawl between two trolls and an ogre, and then King Uther himself had had to intervene after a stand of yearling trees had been burnt down.

None of that had been Merlin's problem, though. No, Merlin's spring—Merlin's entire life, really—was unbearable thanks to Uther's heir.

For some reason Merlin could only blame on the enchantment of Camelot Forest itself, he and Arthur had been best friends since that very first day more than five years ago. Arthur had never stopped being a bit of a bully, especially to Merlin, but the prince didn't tolerate anyone else being unkind to him.

Most of that had been settled in the first few months of Merlin attending school. All Arthur had to do was glare at the other students and they'd run off, and he'd even threatened curses on a full grown giant who'd called Merlin—well, that part didn't matter.

He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have people pointing and muttering around him, but then a group of older satyr kids from the outer edges of the forests joined the class at the start of the year. They'd mocked him for a lot of things, but the worst was when they'd discovered that he had no magic.

Fauns weren't strong spellcasters to begin with, and Merlin's human blood left him entirely disconnected from the flow of life energy that ran through every plant and creature in the forest.

The satyrs had cornered him at the end of the day, bound him with animated thorn branches, and told him they were throwing him out into one of the human villages where he belonged. Merlin had been terrified and thoroughly scratched from thrashing around by the time Arthur tracked the group down.

Arthur's retribution had been swift and chilling. Merlin had actually been scared of him when it was over. Then Arthur had knelt down and freed him from the brambles with a touch. He helped him sit up and held out the hyacinth and bluebell wreath that Merlin only ever took off to sleep. It had fallen when the satyrs nabbed him. Merlin could only stare, so Arthur gently set it in place on his brow.

That was when a different nervous flutter had taken hold in Merlin's gut. It felt warm and restless, like a hundred dawn sprites trying to burst out of his chest, and they only quieted when he wasn't with Arthur. Or on his way to Arthur. Or thinking about Arthur.

Just that was enough to set them off again, but they'd barely begun when a strange, unpleasant whistling sound distracted him.

It sounded like someone choking on a flute, so Merlin got to his hooves and picked through the gnarled roots to investigate. He only had to follow the noise for a few moments before it ended with a frustrated grunt.

He immediately recognized Arthur, building up to a fit. Too curious to go cheer his friend up like he normally did, Merlin instead hid behind another large oak to peek out and spy on what had Arthur so irritated.

The prince sat with his back against the same tree Merlin was using for shelter, scowling down at a set of reed pipes. Taking a deep, determined breath, he lifted the pipes to his lips to try again. It was still just as bad, but Merlin looked at him, lips parted and frowning in concentration as the vanishing sun slanted just right to bathe him in a wash of golden light, and the sprites in his belly were more active than ever.

He couldn't face Arthur like this. He'd make more of a fool of himself than usual. Naturally, he had to prove his point by tripping as he tried to back away quietly. The crash brought Arthur to stand over him, sneering and defensive.

"What are you doing, Merlin?"

Trying to ignore his racing heart, Merlin scrambled upright. "I was watching the sunset until someone tried to kill a harmless set of pipes."

Arthur harrumphed. "They're hard to play."

"Not even!"

"Like you could do better?"

"Of course I could." Merlin grabbed the reeds from Arthur's hand before he could pull away.

Shutting his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Arthur, Merlin started on the first thing that came to mind. It was his mother's favorite song, the one she'd used to lull him to sleep and then, later, to teach him to play.

The notes moved between flowing like a river and skipping in bursts like stepping stones, but they came together into a soothing melody that had always felt like home to Merlin.

When Merlin opened his eyes, Arthur's face glowed a soft pink that had nothing to do with the fading sunset. For probably the first time in his life, he was completely unguarded.

"That was beautiful. What was it?"

Merlin remembered only then why it was his mother's favorite, when he'd never heard anyone else play it. It wasn't a faun song at all. It was a human song of courtship, altered to fit the panpipes.

His human father had used it to woo his faun mother.

Wishing the darkness were complete enough hide him, Merlin thrust the pipes back at Arthur and fled.


	4. Caun't Trust a Leprechaun

"I'm not telling you that."

Arthur frowned at Guinevere. "The Prince Under the Hill is making a request of you. Aren't you required to assist me?"

"Not if it's a ridiculous request."

"That's not specified in the Treaty!"

"No," Gwen agreed slowly, "but if you want to enforce the Treaty over this, you'll need to petition the Court. Do you really want to to tell the entire Council what you just asked me?"

Arthur's father would turn him to stone for a century if he went before the Council with it, and Gwen knew that. Maybe it hadn't been the best idea to come to the tree nymph in the first place, but he hadn't done it because of their diplomatic ties.

She and Merlin were friendly, particularly since summer solstice had come and gone and Merlin had kept avoiding him. It was stupid; Arthur could find him anywhere in Camelot with barely a thought. But tracking him down would look desperate, and Arthur wasn't willing to let his guard down again without an answer.

It was bad enough Merlin had caught him trying to learn those stupid pipes, at least he hadn't seemed to realize why Arthur did it.

"Fine," he said with a put-upon sigh. "I'll release you from your obligations this time, but only as a favor to the Witch of Mists because of your friendship."

"You're not fooling anyone, you know!" she called after him, laughter rustling through the leaves as he strode purposefully away.

* * *

"All-Seeing Witch of Mists, I come before you—"

"Go away."

"What? No!"

The mists roiled bloody red, creeping menacingly along the forest floor towards him, but Arthur held his ground.

"Morgana, I won't be scared off by your theatrics. Come out here and talk to me!"

She appeared, her hair billowing wildly despite the complete lack of wind from anywhere. Aside from two spots of color high on her sharp cheeks, her skin was as pale as the snowy fog that shrouded the mouth of her cavern even at the height of summer. When she spoke, her voice took on the melodic resonance that accompanied her gravest predictions.

"Little brother. For the past fortnight, I have not been able to sleep without dreams of your future giving me headaches. I refuse to let you do it in person, too!"

"Visions?" Arthur demanded, mist disappearing underfoot as he stepped closer. "What have you seen?"

"Nothing I can tell you. Now leave!"

"Morgana!" he shouted, but there was only a dense fogbank where she had been.

* * *

He stared into the single, large blue eye peering down at him, forcing himself to be patient as he waited for a decision.

"Why can't you ask him?" Percival asked in his slow, booming way.

"It doesn't work that way."

"I don't know... Isn't it better to be honest?"

"I'm not being _dishonest_ , I just—You know what, forget it."

"Goodbye, Sire!"

* * *

"Princess!"

Arthur startled backwards as the diminutive figure popped into existence in front of his face. Recovering himself with a glare, he greeted, "Gwaine."

The leprechaun floated around his head, but Arthur refused to turn and follow his movement. As he came back around, Gwaine said, "I hear you've got a problem. Lucky for you, I've got a solution!"

Gwaine was just about the least trustworthy people in the entire forest—he always had his own agenda—but Arthur was out of options. "You do, do you?"

Gwaine grinned and snapped. Something appeared suddenly before Arthur's eyes again—a scroll this time—but he had enough forewarning not to react embarrassingly.

It looked old but not ancient, the edges of the parchment just beginning to crack where it wound around itself, and a dark green ribbon tied it closed.

Arthur reached for it, but Gwaine interrupted. "Ah ah ah, there are conditions!"

Arthur snatched his hand back with a scowl. "Conditions for what? I don't even know what that is."

"I told you, it's the fix for your problem. Get Merlin to open that and you'll have your answer."

"How does that work?" Arthur asked, suspicious.

"Magic, obviously." Gwaine rolled his eyes. "But it only works if you give it to Merlin yourself, and no one can see what's inside before he does."

"What's in it for you?"

Gwaine floated backwards, hands clutched over his heart. "I'm hurt! I'm heartbroken! You don't believe I just want to help my dearest friend?"

Arthur kept his face skeptical and stared until Gwaine sighed and fell back, parallel to the ground with his arms outstretched.

"Fine! You got me. Honestly, I'm just sick of watching..." When he sat back up, he had a conjured daisy in his hand. Putting on an insultingly high, squeaky voice, he started to pluck petals from the flower as he chanted, "He loves me, he loves me not, he—"

"Shut up!" Arthur crushed the daisy with one hand and grabbed the scroll with the other. "I'll do it. And I don't sound like that."

Gwaine raised an eyebrow.

"And... thanks," Arthur said grudgingly.

* * *

Merlin was predictably easy to find. He tripped over his own hooves when Arthur dropped down from the tree next to him, which was also predictable. And amusing.

"What do you want?" Blushing, Merlin had to almost yell to cover Arthur's laughter.

After a deep breath, Arthur helped Merlin to his feet then handed him the scroll.

"Open this."

"What? Why?"

"Just do it."

"What is it?"

"You'll see that when you open it, won't you."

"You're an arse," Merlin told him, but he pulled at the ribbon. It fell away and he unrolled the scroll.

Nothing happened. He knew he shouldn't have believed Gwaine.

Then Merlin's ears—still ridiculous—turned as pink as his cheeks. "Oh," he squeaked. "Um. Arthur?"

"What?" Arthur's worry increased. "What is it? Is it something horrible?"

"No! I mean, it's not horrible, not no like _no_. Because, well, yes."

Arthur peered over Merlin's shoulder to finally see what the scroll said.

 _'Do you like me even though I'm an arse? Yes/No._ '

He hated Gwaine. But he also had an answer.


End file.
